Pushpins are commonly used for attaching a heat sink to a circuit board, so that the heat sink can help remove excess heat energy from a component. These are available in plastic or brass typically. Plastic pushpins suffer from long-term reliability, as a result of creep and aging. Brass pushpins, while not susceptible to creep and aging, do not have much springiness, and can damage circuit boards during installation. These situations are exacerbated on expensive circuit boards with large numbers of components and many pushpins. It is within this context that the embodiments arise.